In the aftermath of the Brussels attacks, critics are blaming Belgium for not assimilating immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

The fact is that Europe does not do assimilation. Europeans widely practice what might be called “anti-assimilation.” Instead of engagement with their immigrants, they practice a kind of look-the-other-way stance.

Muslim immigrants on the whole do not seek to integrate into European societies, but rather to demand that European societies adopt their ways. In Belgium, which has three official languages, Dutch, French and German, there are constant demands that Arabic become a fourth. Muslims in Britain, and throughout Europe, demand shari’a, or Islamic law, for their communities. Muslims in Europe, and the United States, demand that Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) be accorded the same recognition as a public holiday as Christmas.

Muslim defenders, after the bombings in Brussels, insist that Western countries with large Muslim minorities should do more to integrate them into national life. But this integration mostly means that the host culture should bow to the insurgent one.

In ancient lands, like Britain and France, this is an affront; as though the extraordinary traditions of those countries should be shoved aside to accommodate the cultural demands of an a very antagonistic minority. That is asking too much.

Europe has mostly dealt with the challenge by hoping that new generations born in Europe and subjected to the influence of European education, the arts and media will become little Europeans: little Frenchmen, little Belgians, little Englishmen, versed in European history and imbued with European values. There are such people throughout Europe, from those of Turkish descent in Germany to those of Indian descent in Britain and North African descent in France.

But by and large the Muslim minorities remain separate, unequal and belligerently hostile to the countries that have given them shelter and opportunity. Rather than the generations born in Europe adopting European norms, they have ended in an unfortunate place where they are outcasts by their own inclinations and by the difficulties posed by European societies, which are quietly nationalistic, closed, eyes-averted.

If anything, the separation has grown worse for generations that know no life other than the one they lead in Europe. This is often marginal, lived in ghettos like the banlieues, the suburbs to the north of Paris, the troubled Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, or Bradford in the north of England.

The original immigrants could look back to what they had escaped, whether it was war and persecution in Algeria, in the case of those who migrated to France, or the grinding poverty that prevailed in Pakistan, in the British case. People move for safety or for a better life. They do not move because they want a new food or a new religion: They want the old food and the old religion in a better place.

Trouble is that three or four generations on, the immigrant descendants may not feel they are in a better place. They are isolated, largely unemployed and subjected to the preaching of murderous extremists.

Once in Brussels, my wife and I were walking down a side street not far from the Grand Place. My wife, who lived in the Middle East and speaks Arabic, remarked that we had left Europe within a few streets and entered North Africa.

As we passed some young men standing outside a cafe, she heard one say to another in Arabic, “What are they doing here? They don’t belong here.”

When the London suburb of Brixton was becoming a black enclave, favored by West Indian immigrants, I lived nearby. “Don’t go there. Maybe they will leave one day,” my neighbors said when I wanted to go there.

No-go areas are not always that: they also are not-want-to-go areas. Someone has to want assimilation, if that is the answer. — For InsideSources

In particular, it’s a problem because so many people in the world speak English and would like to live in England, maybe hundreds of millions of them. “We are here because you were there,” says a sign held by an India-born woman at a demonstration. The British Empire isn’t all wound up.

The immigrant stream into England has two principal sources. One stream is from former British possessions, like India, Nigeria and Pakistan. These immigrants are English speakers. In England, they’ll have medical care, welfare, and law and order — and it’s where they feel entitled by history.

The other immigrant stream is from Eastern Europe. These immigrants enter England under the terms of the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union. They want to live and work in England for economic reasons. Once there, they tend to stay and live in expatriate communities.

London, the great sprawling metropolis along the Thames River, is now home to 50 expatriate communities, each with more than 10,000 members. More than 300 languages are spoken in London. According to the 2011 census, 37 percent of the city’s population wasn’t born in Britain. If the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a melting pot, London is that and even more so today.

The UK immigration problem is primarily an English problem. It’s not a Scottish, nor a Welsh, nor a Northern Irish one. England and London are where the immigrants head. Accommodation is at a premium in London, and the situation is getting worse with property speculation an industry in itself.

But immigrants nesting in London isn’t just a problem of migration. It’s also a problem of population density for England. The capital bursts at the seams as the north of the country languishes. Think booming Washington D.C. and hurting West Virginia, so close and so faraway.

The immigration problem is one of two issues that dominate the run-up to a June 23 referendum on whether Britain should stay in the EU. The second issue is of sovereignty, and the belief in Britain — mostly England – that Brussels, the seat of the European administration, is setting up rules and regulations that are untenable.

British Prime Minister David Cameron favors Britain staying in Europe with greater control of its borders and freedom from some Europe-wide mandates. Many members of his Conservative Party want out, including about half of his cabinet. Industry wants in by and large, as do professional groups and the important financial sector.

But the desire to leave Europe, known as “Brexit,” may be gaining with the support of Boris Johnson, London’s popular mayor. Polls have “in” just ahead of “out” and closing.

Pulling out has ramifications for the very integrity of the United Kingdom. Feeling against Europe is very much an English phenomenon and isn’t shared in Scotland, where calls for new referendum on its future as part of the United Kingdom will surely follow a vote for Britain to quit Europe. The last vote in September 2014 went against Scottish independence, 55.3 percent to 44.7 percent. Since then, the nationalistic feeling in Scotland has grown, and Scottish nationalists favor membership in Europe. Wales seems to want in.

Britain’s immigrant problem is more severe than ours in the United States. The population stands at 64.9 million and is rising. The island is 600-miles-long and 271-miles-long at its widest point.

It is one small island that has always left a large imprint on the world, and left its language as its lingua franca. It’s troublesome in today’s world of shifting populations, when hundreds of millions think of you as the mother country. — For InsideSources

You and I live in houses, apartments, coops and condos, and flats. The super-rich — or is it the mega-rich or the ultra-rich? — live in “residences.” Well, they own them and sometimes they take up residence in one of their homes, so maybe the name is appropriate. In real estate speak, if it costs north of $5 million, it is a residence.

I get this not from the Oxford English Dictionary, but from the advertisements in The New York Times for living space in New York City. The city is one of a few places where the incalculably rich want to have a residence. And they shell out big bucks — bucks beyond the dreams of common avarice — to get a pad there.

Other cities where the rich feel at home are London, Monaco and Dubai. There is God Almighty-expensive real estate in Hong Kong and Mumbai (the world’s most expensive), but not all the new billionaires want to live there. They want the best of the West.

The real estate rush comes from the new billionaires. Whereas it was once the super-rich of Europe, known as Eurotrash, who sought the marble and concierge life in Manhattan towers, it is now the unfathomably rich from China, India and Russia who have ushered in a new Gilded Age with more wealth than Americans of the Gilded Age before World War I ever could have dreamed as they journeyed between Fifth or Park avenues and Newport, RI. Call them “Globotrash” — and watch them push up prices for everyone, as real estate moguls buy old buildings in Manhattan and demolish them to build luxury towers that rise higher than 90 floors.

Central London has gone, as far as ordinary Londoners are concerned. They have to commute further and further to work in the neighborhoods where they once lived. New York City is not much better: the Globotrash push out the middle class and the poor.

The skyline of Manhattan tells this new Gilded Age story: booming construction of spindly glass towers, so thin they seem even higher than their very real height.

Look in awe at 432 Park Avenue, the luxury condo which stands at 1,396 feet, slightly taller than One World Trade Center. Or the stunning new residence, One57: It rises to 90 floors with prices from a paltry $6 million for a one-bedroom to a penthouse for a god at $94 million. Now, we are talking residence.

The principal selling point for these pieces of fanciful engineering is that you get a view of Central Park. It is all, apparently about, privacy and views. Well, Central Park is nice to look at, but it is not one of the wonders of the world.

As for privacy, wait a minute. While you might want to take in the views of Manhattan as you soak in one of the grand bathrooms’ Carrara marble tubs, and then emerge in the buff to get another look at the views, for which you have paid so extravagantly, you had better watch out. I hear the paparazzi are getting camera-equipped drones. You see the park, and their cameras see you.

One57 has some of the best blue-veined marble ever quarried in Italy. In fact, there is so much of it in the building that an imaginative lawyer might be able to claim that it is a territorial extension of Italy. A part of Italy on Manhattan Island, Mamma mia!

And as the Globotrash are not known for their kitchen skills, it will be again up to the imagination of New York City to get another iconic Italian product, pizza, up there.

King Coal is back – not that he ever went very far away. But, according to Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association, coal in 2016 will again be the world’s favorite carbon fuel, pushing out petroleum as the world's largest source of energy.

This may seem especially surprising at a time when the use of coal in the United States is in decline, edged out by cheap natural gas and increasingly strict regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet a rising tonnage of coal is being used for electric generation worldwide.

The Third World is hungry for coal, as it increases electricity production. In the developed world, nuclear setbacks — most notably the aftereffects of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, when a tsunami wave knocked out six reactors — have helped boost the commitment to coal. The accident has forced the Japanese to burn more coal and the Germans to begin phasing out their nuclear power plants. Other European countries are dithering, and the cost of building nuclear plants is rising.

If you do not have an abundance of natural gas, as here in the United States, then coal is your default choice. It is shipped around the world in larger and larger quantities. The more the world has resisted the burning of coal, the more it has had to fall back on it. Alternative energy, attractive in theory, is yet to make its mark.

Because coal has always had an environmental price, it has always been under attack, and at the same time it has proven stubbornly hard to replace. King Edward I of England, who reigned from 1239 to 1307, was the first known major opponent of coal. He banned it in 1306.

Tales of why he did this vary. One story goes that his mother, Queen Eleanor of Provence, when staying at Nottingham Castle, was so affected by the coal fumes from the town that she had to move out.

Wood was hard to come by in towns, and it does not heat like coal. Anyway England was a cold place and wood was in short supply, so the ban was not very effective, despite the fact that the death penalty was standard for disobeying royal orders.

Two and a half centuries later, Queen Elizabeth I tried to ban coal with not much effect. The prospect of a coal ban was even more draconian then as her father, Henry VIII, had largely denuded the English forests to build his navy and she was even more committed to sea power.

With the invention of the steam engine in the early 1700s (ironically, it was originally intended to pump water out of coal mines), the supremacy of coal for was guaranteed. It led directly to the Industrial Revolution and coal’s preeminence as the fuel of the Industrial Age. There was a price in mine disasters, mine fires that burn for decades, and air pollution. But there were also huge benefits.

Britain led the way both in the use of coal and its environmental costs. An industrial area in the Midlands was known as the “Black Country.”

London fog was assumed to be just that, fog, but it was smog. The smog was so bad that I can recall, in the winter of 1962, walking in the streets holding hands with strangers because you could not see where you were going. So-called smokeless fuel – usually a kind of coke or other high- carbon fuel — ended that, and fog in London is now no worse than it is elsewhere.

“Clean coal” has been the rallying call of the industry for 30 or more years — and coal is getting a lot cleaner in its preparation, combustion and mining. The trick in combustion is higher temperatures and pressures, described as supercritical and ultra-supercritical, a technology China has embraced that increases the efficiency of coal, from a historical 28 percent to around 50 percent with concomitant reductions in the greenhouse gas per kilowatt.

Mining, too, has gotten safer in the developed world with stricter regulation and better equipment. Quinn of the National Mining Association says that reclamation after strip mining is better than it ever has been. Yet the scars remain from an earlier time across all the coal- producing states.

If, like Edward I, Elizabeth I and the EPA, we cannot stop coal use, we better get behind the technologies and regulations that reduce its impact, because King Coal looks set for a long, long reign.— For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Across New England they stand as testaments to a time whenthe United States was a place of untrammeled confidence. The air wasinfinite, the water clean and abundant. At least for those in theownership class, life was good and getting better.

They are the great textile mills of New England; magnificent stone andbrick structures, in their way as beautiful as basilicas, found along thestreams of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

Water, as a motive power source, drew them to the streams. Then they addedsteam, hence the mills’ magnificent smokestacks: sentries standing lonelyguard over the memories of a more confident time.

Mostly the mills are abandoned now, waiting a new use or the wrecker’sball. Some have been saved by being converted into residential lofts andart centers. None will again make cloth, or provide thousands of jobs.

Before critics and designers began linking form to function, the millarchitects of New England, these designers of castles of production,did so, using great stonework and imaginative engineering. They arestunningly handsome, the way that great bridges are; the spirit ofenterprise encased in stone and brick lovingly.

So when and why did we develop a penchant for ugly buildings? Was it thedownside of cost accounting? Why are so many modern schools dumpy anddeformed? Why must we put our children to study the classics in structuresthat implicitly deny the classics?

In the second half of the 20th century, did we hand human aspiration overto cost-cutters, put it through a calculating machine and turn it out bentand spindled? Must we learn to appreciate the economics of urban blight,the strips of chain outlets that presage our arrival in any town or city?

One can weep now over the beauty of a mill in Rhode Island or a grainelevator on a Virginia farm. But will we weep in a century over the goldenarches? Shed a tear for the mall? Swallow hard for Public School 19somewhere?

If the abandoned mills of the Industrial Revolution were just a littleolder, we would characterize them as archeological sites — perhaps U.N.World Heritage Sites — and assure their survival for generations to cometo marvel at.

Of course the history of New England industrialized weaving was notwithout strife and folly, greed and cruelty.

The loom technology wassmuggled out of Britain by industrial espionage, labor conditions wereterrible for much of the life of the mills, and labor unrest continuedthrough all the days of the textile industry. Royal Mills in West Warwick,R.I., for example, the former home of Fruit of the Loom, was the scene of a bitterstrike in 1922.

Powering yesterday, charming today

Incidentally, this giant mill has been preserved. In a stunning piece ofimaginative restoration, it has been converted into 250 apartments,keeping the feel and preserving some of the artifacts of the old mill.It is a restoration that deserves global recognition for showing how the19th century’s relics can find life in the 21st century, just as therestored power plant on the South Bank of the River Thames in London nowhouses the Tate Modern art gallery.

When old beauty meets new high purpose, something thrilling happens.

The trick in urban architecture is to remember the people who are outsideof the buildings as well as inside; those who can glory in the EmpireState Building or the Sears Tower by looking up as well as going in.

For this full enjoyment, great architecture needs great public space.

Would the skyscrapers of New York be as glorious without Central Park toview them from? Would the new "Shard," the extraordinary glass-clad buildingin London, the tallest in Europe, be as great if it could not be viewedfrom the city’s abundant public spaces?

Yet urban design today, in an age of public austerity, makes no allowancefor public space and has come accept the myth that economics are at oddswith great city design.

I am comforted to know that the great squares ofLondon, the avenues of Paris and the mills of New England were built forprofit. It can be done. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Across New England they stand as testaments to a time whenthe United States was a place of untrammeled confidence. The air wasinfinite, the water clean and abundant. At least for those in theownership class, life was good and getting better.

They are the great textile mills of New England; magnificent stone andbrick structures, in their way as beautiful as basilicas, found along thestreams of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

Water, as a motive power source, drew them to the streams. Then they addedsteam, hence the mills’ magnificent smokestacks: sentries standing lonelyguard over the memories of a more confident time.

Mostly the mills are abandoned now, waiting a new use or the wrecker’sball. Some have been saved by being converted into residential lofts andart centers. None will again make cloth, or provide thousands of jobs.

Before critics and designers began linking form to function, the millarchitects of New England, these designers of castles of production,did so, using great stonework and imaginative engineering. They arestunningly handsome, the way that great bridges are; the spirit ofenterprise encased in stone and brick lovingly.

So when and why did we develop a penchant for ugly buildings? Was it thedownside of cost accounting? Why are so many modern schools dumpy anddeformed? Why must we put our children to study the classics in structuresthat implicitly deny the classics?

In the second half of the 20th century, did we hand human aspiration overto cost-cutters, put it through a calculating machine and turn it out bentand spindled? Must we learn to appreciate the economics of urban blight,the strips of chain outlets that presage our arrival in any town or city?

One can weep now over the beauty of a mill in Rhode Island or a grainelevator on a Virginia farm. But will we weep in a century over the goldenarches? Shed a tear for the mall? Swallow hard for Public School 19somewhere?

If the abandoned mills of the Industrial Revolution were just a littleolder, we would characterize them as archeological sites — perhaps U.N.World Heritage Sites — and assure their survival for generations to cometo marvel at.

Of course the history of New England industrialized weaving was notwithout strife and folly, greed and cruelty.

The loom technology wassmuggled out of Britain by industrial espionage, labor conditions wereterrible for much of the life of the mills, and labor unrest continuedthrough all the days of the textile industry. Royal Mills in West Warwick,R.I., for example, the former home of Fruit of the Loom, was the scene of a bitterstrike in 1922.

Powering yesterday, charming today

Incidentally, this giant mill has been preserved. In a stunning piece ofimaginative restoration, it has been converted into 250 apartments,keeping the feel and preserving some of the artifacts of the old mill.It is a restoration that deserves global recognition for showing how the19th century’s relics can find life in the 21st century, just as therestored power plant on the South Bank of the River Thames in London nowhouses the Tate Modern art gallery.

When old beauty meets new high purpose, something thrilling happens.

The trick in urban architecture is to remember the people who are outsideof the buildings as well as inside; those who can glory in the EmpireState Building or the Sears Tower by looking up as well as going in.

For this full enjoyment, great architecture needs great public space.

Would the skyscrapers of New York be as glorious without Central Park toview them from? Would the new "Shard," the extraordinary glass-clad buildingin London, the tallest in Europe, be as great if it could not be viewedfrom the city’s abundant public spaces?

Yet urban design today, in an age of public austerity, makes no allowancefor public space and has come accept the myth that economics are at oddswith great city design.

I am comforted to know that the great squares ofLondon, the avenues of Paris and the mills of New England were built forprofit. It can be done. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Rupert Murdoch, the 81-year-old chief executive of News Corp., has been told by a select committee of the British parliament that he is “unfit” to head his global media conglomerate.

It is a particularly British accusation and one that is especially punishing, both because it is so indelible and is so seldom used.

“Unfit” is not a charge that is often leveled, so its impact is especially great. In 1971 a publishing rival of Murdoch’s, Robert Maxwell, was indicted as being “unfit” to run a public company. His were sins of greed and venality.

Murdoch’s sins, you might say, are sins of encouraging a culture of corruption in two of his London-based tabloid newspapers: the defunct News of the World and The Sun. It should be said that Murdoch did not invent the culture of Britain’s tabloid press, but he encouraged it to lengths of excess that had not been dreamed of earlier.

Fleet Street — the collective name for British newspapers which derives from the street where they were once all located — has always been a place of excess. But things really turned white hot in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Television and radio were competing for entertainment value, but news was still the province of newspapers. The game was to shock the readers without depressing them. The publisher Lord Beaverbrook said during World War II of his Daily Express: “I want the readers to feel the sun is shining when they read the Express.”

When I arrived in Fleet Street, well after the war, the sun was still shining in the popular papers. And what better way to keep the sun shining than by exposing the foibles of the aristocracy, the Royal Family and, of course, film stars?

We, the denizens of Fleet Street, were modestly paid but were given essentially unlimited expense accounts to disport ourselves around the clubs and restaurants of London in search of the rich and famous at unguarded play. The culture was one of discover, speculate, elaborate and publish.

Reporters were pushed very hard to dig up the titillating, embellish it and present it as news. We descended on crime scenes, the sexually engaged and the overtly greedy.

Yet there were limits, unwritten but understood, especially pertaining to private grief and even the Royal Family. Infidelity from a vicar was reportable. Similarly rumored goings on by major politicians and national figures, less so.

But change was on its way in the shape of Rupert Murdoch, and in the growing force of television in British life. Murdoch trashed the barriers, such as they were. He started publishing pictures of bare-breasted girls in The Sun, and turned his tabloids from being newspapers that published gossip along with the news to gossip-only papers. They became vicious as well as tawdry.

Murdoch also turned his papers from leaning politically left-wing to being savagely right-wing. It worked.

The Sun and the News of the World started making enough money to finance Murdoch’s other ventures, including buying and building Fox News.

Murdoch established an even more irresponsible culture. There were no rules now: Hence the phone-tapping, police bribing and other sins that have brought Murdoch to his sorry state of being “unfit.” There was a new thuggery and vulgarity that had not existed.

Yet if Murdoch is unfit, so are his accusers. It is British politicians — including Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and David Cameron and their followers — who indulged Murdoch, courted him and encouraged the arrogance of Fleet Street.

British newspaper publishers have always considered it their right to have access to the prime minister and no holder of that office has sought to disillusion them. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

I’m asked with some frequency these days, what do I think the United States will look like in 25 years to 50 years? Underlying this question is a real concern that we’ve lost our way as a nation, that the best is behind us and a strong feeling that the generations to come won’t have it as good as we’ve had.

Actually, I think the United States will be fine. It’ll still be a world power, but not as dominant as it is today and was in the 20th century. I think we’ll still have one of the largest and most important economies in the world; that we’ll still be a powerhouse of invention; and that ourmovies, music and other entertainment forms will still dominate the globe.

American English will continue to be the international means of communication. Sorry Britain, there’s no license fee on language.

A rosy picture, eh? Not quite.

The second, and maybe the more important question, is what sort of country will the United States be to live in? This picture is less rosy.

First, we’re dividing into a country of the super rich and the burgeoning working poor living unpleasantly. The movement of quality manufacturing jobs in the auto and steel industries to the South tells part of that story. The high-wage jobs of Michigan and the unionized North — jobs that pay about $35 an hour — to the union-free auto plants and factories of the South, which pay $14 an hour, is a harbinger of the future. Can less be more?

If the United States is going to have told hold down its wages, then we should fix the living space; that means the infrastructure. It’s a mess and it’ll take decades to bring it up to the standards of much of the rest of the world.

We need better roads (less time in traffic), repaired bridges, sewers, water systems and public transportation. We also should fix the parks — state and national — and build pedestrian areas where we can enjoy the great natural beauty of our rivers and woodlands. London and Paris and Vienna make their rivers places of beauty and recreation. New York runs highways along its rivers — highways where it should have cafes. Los Angeles has enclosed its streams in concrete.

London has refurbished Brunel's masterpiece of design St. Pancras railway station to accommodate the new 200-mph trains that will whisk you to Paris in a little over two hours. Both the station and the trains are great achievements; achievements that can be enjoyed by traveler and visitor alike.

By contrast Union Station in Washington, D.C., a masterpiece in its day, is a mess. The tracks are inadequate. The station seating is inadequate, broken and mostly an afterthought. The restrooms are inadequate and dirty. The majesty of the station has been destroyed by tawdry retailers and half-finished repairs. Decay permeates the place — maybe to prepare the passengers for the disreputable taxis outside.

What an introduction to the capital of the free world. However, if you’ve just arrived on Amtrak, you might already be so dispirited you won't notice.

Likewise, the nation's schools need to be renovated. Leaky buildings seem more designed to prepare students for a lifetime of failure and decline than for a life of pride and accomplishment. “We make buildings and they make us,” Winston Churchill said.

The case for fixing the nation's infrastructure is compelling. But it does not compel in Congress. Congress is hell-bent to hurt the infrastructure with cost cutting-measures that will — as has happened in Britain and Spain — as likely as not add to the deficit rather than reducing it.

A more believable use of the government's resources might be to start fixing America by diverting some of the defense budget to sprucing up and repairing the nation, yielding results in a time frame of 25 to 50 years.

The story of another Churchill saying goes like this:

Churchill was walking in the garden of his beloved home, Chartwell, when he summoned the gardener and said, “I want you to plant an oak tree here.”

The gardener, looking to Churchill and seeing a man approaching 90, said, “But sir, it’ll take a hundred years to grow.”

“Well, you had better plant it now, hadn't you?” averred Churchill.

Quite so. The future awaits. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Even railroad fanatics like me have to admit that the future of passenger transportation by rail, particularly urban commuter rail, is pretty well frozen where it is. New rail – even light rail, an idealistic indulgence – is doomed by high costs, lack of appropriate track, and political squabbling.

New subways, the elegant way to get around a city, by going under it, are an almost impossible dream. The costs are too great in times of austerity, and the costs of maintenance can be prohibitive as a system ages.

Increasingly, the future appears to be the humble bus. Buses have low capital costs, are flexible, and can be adjusted to demand and population changes in ways trains cannot.

Spare the groaning: The buses are coming. And today's bus need not be yesterday's – noisy, smelly, and unreliable.

London, which has possibly the best transportation infrastructure in the world, with a huge rail network, is nonetheless betting on buses. It's deploying a new bus that is designed for the times and preserves some of the features that have made its buses emblematic of the city, like the two decks. And, yes, they are red.

The new London buses are a meeting of nostalgia with high-tech and environmental sensibility. London was busy phasing out its traditional buses in favor of articulated buses, which bend in the middle, when a controversial and eccentric Conservative journalist turned politician, Boris Johnson, declared that if he were elected mayor, he would save the old buses, or at least the concept of double-deck buses. He won the election and ideas were sought from the public.

The result is what the tabloids call the "Boris Bus." It's a high-tech beauty that meets many demands. It has two doors and two staircases, but it's so low that wheelchairs are easily accommodated.

They are designed to have conductors during rush hours and to be operated by drivers only at other times.

They use modern composite materials from the airline industry and are hybrids, with diesel engines and regenerative breaking. That has made way for the lowering of the bottom deck, increasing stability while reducing weight.

The initial reception of this high-tech scion of the old and loved London bus has been so enthusiastic that Johnson is talked about as a future Conservative prime minister – riding the bus to the highest office in the land.

Back to our buses. They, too, are getting better, but less dramatically so. Between Washington and New York, there's now thriving bus service with half a dozen competing firms offering WiFi, toilets, and many points of departure. The ticket price, about $20 each way, is a fraction of those for Amtrak and airlines.

These intercity buses are diesel-powered, but many cities are using natural-gas-powered buses. That might yet seal the deal for buses as the future of urban transportation, reducing the use of cars. America is awash in natural gas. It also has less environmental impact.

Buses are at their best when, as my wife pointed out in London once, they run like conveyors. Frequently, that means enough dedicated bus lanes.

The Obama administration would be well advised to launch a bus initiative with emphasis on better vehicles, à la London, and dedicated bus lanes. The solution to urban congestion may be in a high-speed, WiFi-equipped, natural-gas-powered bus. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

I’m a sucker for trains, passionate about light rail, gooey over subways, sentimental about trams and trolley buses, and very content on a bus. I’m a public transport enthusiast.

This doesn’t mean, as critics of public conveyances so often believe, that one is against cars.

Let’s get this straight: One of the great wonders that make life in our times free and rich is the private car. It could be argued that they deserve constitutional protection, like guns and the media.

When you climb into your car, you are truly free. More, you are surrounded by your own stuff – the half-eaten candy bar, crushed tissue box, scattered CDs, and quite possibly the hair from your dog. Even if you are a neatnik, your car is your castle; safe, secure, mobile, cozy, cool.

Also, the car is a work of manufacturing genius — so much complexity for so little money. The first thing every poor person dreams of is a car.

I got my first old banger when I turned 16. It had many deficiencies, not the least of which were the mechanical brakes and the unsynchronized gear box.

But for me, it was the greatest vehicle ever built: Keep your Rollses, Bugattis and Cadillacs. I had a car. I was free. I was grown up. I was a person. The open road belonged to me, as did the toolbox, the lovers’ lane and wondrous bragging rights.

So what’s this about public transportation?

Sadly, in cities, cars have worn out their welcome. The miracle of the private car is now the urban curse. Too much of a good thing, you might say.

It’s not so much that cars are bad, but that they’re being used for the wrong things: getting to work, or getting around a crowded city.

Europe has its car problems, but it does better with alternatives. You need guts and patience to get around the Arc de Triumph in Paris by car, or to circumvent London on the M25.

In 2003 London restricted cars through a stiff congestion charge, which is now a model for the world — although Singapore did it 25 years earlier.

For political and historical reasons, Europe has the jump on public transportation. Not just its great cities but also its smaller towns, and even villages, have workable (extensive, seven days a week) public systems. A few American cities–notably Boston, New York and Chicago–offer integrated public transport, but more as a last resort than a first choice.

In Prague, I’ve just taken a tram from my Old Town hotel to the castle across the Vltava River and back. Easy and fun. User-friendly, too. I traveled here from Bratislava, Slovakia on a clean, comfortable train with a dining car and toilets in about four hours.

President Obama has talked a good line on infrastructure and green jobs. The two should be joined.

Infrastructure jobs mop up the construction-worker surplus and position our cities for a greener future. Particularly, electric buses need a new hearing. Overhead lines have worked well with two connections–like a big tuning fork–bringing in the power. But they have one weakness: They are not flexible and tend to disconnect on corners. Better engineering and batteries could solve that old bugaboo.

There is a liberal elite that worships Eurotransit, and in so doing infuriates the Europhobes.

In the 1980s, we were constantly looking to Japan to see what worked–until it didn’t work anymore. In all but air transportation, it’s time to look to Europe to see what works and improve on it. I doubt the practicality of high-speed rail in this country but electric vehicles in our cities, with fewer cars, would improve the quality of life as the air cleared.

What’s more, transportation infrastructure is an investment where the jobs stay here, and people experience the difference.

White House Chronicle on Social

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